Begging is one thing that is different in India than it is in America.
Very few people out and out ask you for anything in India, expecting that you might give it to them out of the goodness in your heart. Rather, they are constantly asking you for work, or simply picking up your suitcase and starting towards your hotel, or stopping their rickshaw directly in your path and making it very difficult not to go with them. Their attitude seems to be that they cannot count on your kindness, but they might be able to make themselves temporarily useful.
In America, people simply importune you for money, and only money, with nothing offered in return.
There's no entrepreneurial incentive for the giver to respond to.
It's not all that difficult to see these characteristics as not simply individual, but national.


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